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Tuesday, August 15, 2017

How to Lead with an Open Mind

by Steve Axelrod, Ph.D.

“What
we’ve seen [at Google] is that the people who are the most successful here, who
we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll
be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’
and they’ll go ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’ – Laszlo Bock,
SVP of People Operations at Google (New York Times).

True open-mindedness, the kind
described by Laszlo Bock, is a critical, but unappreciated component of CEO
leadership. As a trait first measured by social psychologists in the ’50s,
open-mindedness has not been studied in relation to leadership effectiveness.
Here are the key characteristics of open-mindedness and how it can be
cultivated by organizational leaders.

What does “open-minded” mean in
organizational life?

On the simplest level,
open-mindedness means being receptive to new ideas and new information. In
organizational life, it has several dimensions:

An openness to internally generated
inspiration or innovation (creative dimension)
An openness to the ideas of others in the organization (collaborative or team
dimension)
An openness to new trends and needs evident in customers and markets (external
sensing dimension)

How to develop open-mindedness

Guided self-reflection can help you
cultivate the collaborative dimension of open-mindedness. Either solo or in
concert with a coach/thought partner, use the following prompts:

Are you able to admit you’re wrong? Take note of your own
tendencies to make excuses, extensively explain and argue. Dissect recent
disagreements to examine whether you were appropriately defending your
position or shutting out others’ opinions and important observations.

Can you describe instances where you, as a leader, changed your
mind on a fundamental organizational issue? How did you come to see
things differently?

Are there key people in your organization whom you turn to because
they will give you the “unvarnished truth?”

Can you describe a time when your team took your initial point of
view or decision, reworked it, and came out with a better decision? How
did you respond?

Finally, reflect on how your organizational culture either fosters
or devalues open-mindedness. As a leader, do you promote or hinder
open-mindedness as part of the culture? As the CEO you can elevate the
importance of open-mindedness as both a value and a behavior.

A question of balance

Our traditional view of leadership
stresses forcefulness, courage and risk-taking. But as important as these ideas
are, when coupled with closed-mindedness, intolerance of dissent and groupthink
they can lead to organizational ruin.

Open-mindedness is foundational to both good
decision-making and organization-wide engagement. We need to do more to value,
select for and develop open-mindedness, for it is the dynamic balance between
forceful action and open-mindedness that defines outstanding leadership.